Letters 6/2/05

June 1, 2005

Punk‘d prison perspective
Hey, I like your paper and your prolific excellence as a journalist. The piece on punk prisons (5/19) raises a few dilemmas for me. They are:
1. Baldwin and Lake County are without question one of Michigan’s going economic trouble zones... they need help and you have responded. That, in my mind is good. No, it is great!
However, Geo Inc. is a subsidiary of the Wackenhut Corporation; a corporation that is part of our public trading system. A corporation is, by design, responsible to its shareholders in order to maximize profits. Profits can only be maximized by putting more punks in prison. In short, Geo, Inc. is proffering from the trafficking of children; albeit, really dangerous children. This fact, as weird as it sounds, seems to always be overshadowed in the deal-making phase between government and industry by the tremendous economic need of the sponsor community.
Wackenhut is known by criminologists as the worst bottom-feeding corporation on the planet. Even John Ashcroft’s own Justice Department analysis of privatization in corrections in 2003 admits that only about 1%, at the most, is realized in overall savings to the taxpayers. It’s a difficult dilemma.
2. From 1991-96 I held the only private contract for psychological services inside a Michigan prison at the Oaks near Manistee. After serving in a maximum security prison with the most violent offenders that Michigan has to offer, I am in no danger whatsoever of “over-idealizing” rapists and murderers. In fact, I have never recommended parole for the many, many offenders that I have encountered.
Still, I find it troubling to know that the corrections budget is the highest of all Michigan’s departments while research in prevention and treatment is most heavily funded by marginalized non-profit groups. To me, it would make better moral sense to offer profit for prevention and treatment efforts rather than to pay investors for the enterprise of containment. There seems to be an overall problem in the philosophy and structure of current policies.
To my discredit, I present these dilemmas without any solution, especially for the people of Lake County and the victims of violent crime. However, after reading your article I felt compelled to participate in the conversation as I share your hopes for economic improvement. Thanks for your thoughtful work.

Name withheld by request

The lies behind the war
The wars in the Middle East were a lie before they started and continue to insult and infuriate anyone who feels at all connected with the human race.
The Bush administration is building a military empire in Iraq in order to make further strikes agains sovereign nations. The current administration‘s goals include invading, occupying, and then stealing national resources from as many Middle Eastern nations as possible.
Don‘t let this happen. Now is not the time for complacency. Write, call, or email your legislators and tell them $200 billion building up someone else‘s country is criminal. tell them 200,000 dead people cannot possibly be justified. Tell them if they don‘t speak out against the genocide going on in the Middle East then you will not vote for them next cycle.
Steve Little • Charlevoix

Get charged up
When you think about it, electricity is probably more important to our day-to-day living than gasoline. Try going a couple hours at home or work without electricity. I doubt you’ll enjoy the experience. Sure, you could probably live without the TV, at least for a couple hours. But what about your refrigerator? The lights? Ugh…..
How would our schools, hospitals and government services operate if electricity weren’t affordable and reliable? The growing service oriented sector of our economy, based on technology, would be stalled without electricity.
In Northern Michigan there are over 200,000 of us who get our electricity from a member “owned” electric cooperative. In the Traverse City area, chances are you get your electricity from either Cherryland Electric or Great Lakes Energy, both customer “owned” cooperatives.
Cooperatives are different that most utilities. The “owners” of the utility are the customers and the mission of the cooperative is to serve the needs of the community.
Cooperatives are governed by a board of directors. The board makes sure that cooperatives serve their “owners” in the community with quality service and affordable rates. The cooperative Board is like our local school board or county commissions. They oversee the delivery of an essential service to our community – electricity.
Given the importance of electricity to our selves and our community, it is important for the “owners” of an electric cooperative to participate in the oversight of their utility. The best and easiest way to do this is to vote in your annual board of directors election. Sadly, at Cherryland, only about 1% of the “owners” get involved in the election of their board.
Think about how well our school boards or county commissions would run if only 1% of the “owners” came out to elect leaders. Almost certainly, things would be run by a small group of “insiders” who could not be relied upon to represent the needs of the “owners.”
Just like in private industry (think of Enron or WorldCom), when an organization’s board isn’t doing their job, the “owners” pay the price. Could it be mere coincidence that cooperative “owners” in northern Michigan pay the highest rates for electricity in Michigan? And Cherryland will be seeking an electric rate increase within the year!
Cherryland Electric’s board election will be held this year on Saturday, June 18 at 9 a.m. at their “owner’s” offices in Grawn. You can meet the board candidates and let them know what you want to see happen at your cooperative. You can also vote by mail-in ballot. Ballots have been distributed in the May edition of Country Lines, the monthly magazine sent to all cooperative “owners.”
For more information on your cooperative, call Cherryland Electric @ 231.486.9200.

John Murray • Cedar

Corrections
We‘re still wiping egg off our faces at the Express over last week‘s issue which featured the preceding week‘s Hot Dates and Classified sections due to an error in the transposition of pages. Our cover also contained the error of a transposed caption. Our sincere apologies to all of our readers and those of you who had an event or classified which didn‘t get in.
Additionally, the cover description of the Grand Traverse County Road Commission story misstated that the Road Commission will consider the Smart Roads option. In fact, a 30-member group will consider different solutions to the region’s traffic/land use problems.